Congratulations, Dr. Jingrui Xie!

Today (October 13, 2016), Jingrui (Rain) Xie defended her doctoral dissertation on probabilistic electric load forecasting, which made her the first BigDEAL PhD.

When coming back to academia three years ago, I had the mission of producing the next generation of finest analysts for the industry. As the first PhD from BigDEAL, Rain sets the standard for BigDEAL products and tells what the finest analyst looks like.

Rain joined UNC Charlotte in August, 2013, as my first master student. She received her M.S. degree in Engineering Management in May, 2015, and continued with her PhD in Infrastructure and Environmental Systems.

In just three years, she published 7 journal papers:

• Temperature scenario generation for probabilistic load forecasting (TSG, in press)
• Relative humidity for load forecasting models (TSG, in press)
• On normality assumption in residual simulation for probabilistic load forecasting (TSG, 2016)
• GEFCom2014 probabilistic electric load forecasting: an integrated solution with forecast combination and residual simulation (IJF, 2016)
• Improving gas load forecasts with big data (GAS, 2016)
• Long term retail energy forecasting with consideration of residential customer attrition (TSG, 2015)
• Long term probabilistic load forecasting and normalization with hourly information (TSG, 2014)

and 3 conference papers:

• Comparing two model selection frameworks for probabilistic load forecasting (PMAPS, 2016)
• From high-resolution data to high-resolution probabilistic load forecasts (T&D, 2016)
• Combining load forecasts from independent experts: experience at NPower forecasting challenge 2015 (NAPS, 2015)

She was among the top contestants in all of the forecasting competitions she participated:

• Top1 in BigDEAL Forecasting Competition 2016
• Top 3 in NPower Gas Demand Forecasting Challenge 2015
• Top 3 in NPower Electricity Demand Forecasting Challenge 2015
• Top 3 in Load Forecasting Track of Global Energy Forecasting Competition 2014

She has also received several prestigious awards:

• 2016 IEEE PES Technical Committee Prize Paper Award
• International Symposium on Forecasting 2016 Travel Award
• 2015 IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid Best Reviewer Award
• 2015 Foundation of the Association of Energy Engineers Scholarship
• International Symposium on Forecasting 2015 Travel Award
• 2015 UNCC College of Engineering Outstanding Graduate Research Assistant Award
• 2015 International Institute of Forecasters Student Forecasting Award

Rain has been full-time working at SAS during the past three years. In addition to the academic excellence, Rain received a promotion earlier this year for her outstanding performance at work. 

It took her 21 months to get the PhD - she enrolled in the PhD program in January, 2015, and defended the dissertation today. That said, she just proved the reproducibility of my 20-month PhD!

Lastly, but most importantly, she became a mother two years ago - her daughter is now two-year old. 

Again, congratulations, Dr. Jingrui Xie!